Kacia Chekatoŭskaya
The Last Breakfast (theatre texts)
The volume includes six plays: Mastectomy, The Last Breakfast, Discreet, Half a Year, Gorgons, Theatre. In each play, Kacia Chekatoūskaya takes a close look at those different forms of violence and control that usually remain hidden in an authoritarian regime or dictatorship: from the standardisation of a female body to the outbreaks of violence in “ordinary” families to the use of state violence in the suppression of peaceful protests. Chekatoūskaya's plays are based on documentary research and often on the author's own experiences and thus represent a realistic portrayal of the violent landscape in contemporary Belarus. The author also addresses the overlapping of state violence and violence in the private sphere and points out that there are hardly any violence- and repression-free zones in a society like Belarus, which leaves deep traces in everyone who belongs to this society, even if they do not necessarily experience violence in their own bodies. Another special feature of these plays is that they are all written in Belarusian, a language that Belarusian playwrights use exceedingly rarely. The author won the Uladzimir Karatkevich competition for literary debuts with this manuscript.
Kacia Chekatoŭskaya is a Belarusian playwright and actress. She studied educational psychology at the Belarusian State Pedagogical University (graduated in 2009), attended ECLAB College (European College of Liberal Arts in Belarus) with a degree in Contemporary Art and Theatre (2017). Participant of the Laboratory of Social Theatre (Minsk) as an actress and writer. Kacia Chekatoŭskaya deals with issues such as domestic violence, discrimination, disadvantaged people and state violence. She has been living in exile since 2021.
Publisher has not yet been determined.